This invention relates to improvements in portable animal pens to facilitate the movement of animals from an enclosure such as a corral or barn into a holding chute.
In raising animals such as cattle, for example, it is necessary from time to time that they be handled for such matters as vaccination, blood and pregnancy tests, test, branding and the like and for such purposes, they are commonly assembled in a corral or barn from which they are moved singly into what is known as a holding and/or catch chute. Such chutes are designed with various means for restraining the animal for obvious reasons and are generally provided by a veterinarian or the cattle owner. No invention is claimed here for such chutes per se and one type is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 2,266,991.
Once cattle have been in the chute, they are often reluctant to readily enter it again and thus when such chutes are deployed immediately adjacent the gate to a corral or barn, considerable difficulty and effort is usually required to move them into the chute and not infrequently, personnel involved are subjected to injury. Certain endeavors to alleviate these problems appear in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,691,359, 2,835,223 and 3,002,493 where different arrangements of movable and portable barrier sections are disclosed and the present invention, resulting from many years of experiments and observations relative to the type of animal handling problems indicated, provides several improvements in portable pen structures.
It is thus one of the important objects of this invention to provide a sectionalized portable and knockdown animal pen structure wherein a plurality of barrier or fence sections are interlockably connectible to each other to form a relatively stable free standing enclosure or pen which does not require attachment to ground embedded support members.
Another object is to provide an animal pen structure of the above class designed for use intermediate a corral or barn and a holding chute to form a passageway therebetween and which includes gate means in the fence sections movable to establish two enclosures or pens within the sectional structure of which one is a holding pen to temporarily contain one animal from the corral or barn and the other provides a protected area for an operator administering to another animal already in the chute.
A further object herein is to provide a pen structure as characterized which utilizes three like dimensioned fence sections arranged at one point to communicate with the gate of a corral or barn and to provide converging sections communicating with the entrance to the chute.
Still another object is to provide a pen structure as indicated above wherein the size of the intermediate holding pen is sufficient to permit the contained animal a limited freedom of movement sufficient to eliminate the effect of its being hemmed in and to thus avoid the natural tendency of an animal in unduly confined quarters to seek an immediate exit.
Another object is to provide a pen structure as outlined that is conveniently portable, simple and easy to erect and dismantle and sufficiently sturdy for efficiently performing its intended purpose.
The foregoing objects and such further objects as may appear herein, or be hereinafter pointed out, together with the advantages of this invention will be more fully discussed and developed in the more detailed description of the accompanying drawings.